


In The Water, I Am Beautiful

by Faye_Reynolds



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Diagnosed With Terminal Illness!AU, Fluff, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, SO MUCH FLUFF, Ugh, Uhm, a little bit of angst, i disgust myself, still suck at tagging, think that's it, y'all are determined to make me cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 02:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3793630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faye_Reynolds/pseuds/Faye_Reynolds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diagnosed With A Terminal Illness!AU</p><p>Ask game prompt from the tumbles.</p><p>Title from City and Colour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Water, I Am Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> Not edited because I am the garbage and also it's 6:30 in the morning and surprise, surprise I haven't slept.
> 
> Enjoy!

 Joe typed numbers violently into his phone and waited.

“Hey Joe, what’s up?” Tab asked on the other line.

“He’s gone. He fucking left!” Joe shouted, voice cracking.

“Wait, what? Why?”

“I don’t fucking know. He just left me a note.”

“A note? Is he fucking serious?”

Joe sighed, nerves on edge and he had the urge to smoke an entire pack of cigarettes at once.

“I guess so.”

“Well, I’m getting the guys and we’re coming over. Then we’re gonna find your dumbass husband.”

“Yeah, thanks Tab.”

“Hey, what else is family for Lieb?”

Joe hung up and promptly threw a dining room chair across the room where it crashed into and end table,and scattered a plethora of different pill bottles before it snapped in half.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

He grabbed the good bottle of scotch from Nix the day they moved into their house and sunk into a chair as he read the note from his husband, over and over again.

_Joe,_

_Please know this is not to get away from you. I just needed a change of scenery. It’s so strange how everything went so wrong so fast. I hope that this doesn’t last, because these words might be too little too late, and I'm afraid that I’ve already lost you.  
These past three months have felt like eternity. This is so hard and I’ll long to hold you in my arms, but…it’s better this way._

_\- David_

The words of Web’s letter clung to every cell in Joe’s body, wrapping around and suffocating him.

Leave it to David Fucking Webster to completely destroy him in one action and six sentences.

Joe lit another cigarette and poured another glass of scotch before angrily pushing the tears off his face.

He stared at the letter, absorbing them individually and then all together, repeatedly, until Talbert burst into the house.

“Christ, open a window or something, Joe.”

“Good to see you two Tab,” Joe’s voice was void of emotion and rough from the burn of smoke and alcohol.

“Oh hell no! Joseph Liebgott is not just going to wallow in his sorrows and drown himself in scotch and nicotine.”

“Yes he is.”

“No he is not.” A deep voice spoke out from open doorway and caused Joe’s head to shoot up.

“Dick?” Joe was surprised for the second time that day and just stared.

“Hey Joe,” Dick responded as he moved further into the room.

“The fuck are you doing here man? How’d you get here so fast?” Joe asked for lack of anything better to say.

How long had he been sitting there just staring at letters on a page?

“What do you mean fast? It still took me two hours to get here. Tab said he tried to call you but you didn’t answer any of the twenty-four times.”

Dick shot Joe a reprimanding look but for once it had no effect on him.

Tab interrupted the impromptu staring contest, “They’re here.”

Joe averted his eyes to stare at his doorway and look for, for lack of a better word, the cavalry to enter the house.

The next half hour was spent in a flurry of strategy planning.

Joe sat and watched and admired his friends as they asked him questions and turned the living and dining room into a command center.

Nixon, Dick, Harry and Buck were huddled around a map of San Francisco dividing parts of the city in quadrants that the men could split up and go through, stopping at places Joe and David had been at or even passed by.

Speirs and Lip were dividing the men up and reminding them what car to look for and what to ask people at each location they went to.

George Luz was keeping the situation lighter and less serious, appreciated by everyone, including Joe, by making jokes about how Web was going to walk through the door any minute and freak out about a house full of people. Joe even smiled when he asked if the note wasn’t just some random scrap of writing about two sharks.

Ten minutes after everyone went over their respective duties one last time, Joe was alone in his house once again.

Dick had said that it’d be best if they didn’t lose the both of them in one day. Then, he’d pulled Joe aside and assured him they’d find Web.

Joe lit another cigarette and thought about the last three months of his and David’s life together.

* * *

 

“Hey, I almost forgot, how’d your appointment go?” Joe asked from the bathroom.

“Fine.” David murmured from behind his laptop screen, his entire world narrowing down to two words on his screen. He heard the light switch flick off and quickly shut his laptop.

Joe smiled mischievously, “You lookin’ at something dirty there, Web?”

David shot Joe an annoyed look and went to put his laptop beside the bed, but Joe was faster and snatched it out of his hands.

It was in this moment that David regretted not protecting his laptop with a password.

He shot up off the bed and moved to grab the laptop from Joe.

“Give it back Joe! Seriously, come on.”

Somehow, Joe had managed to dodge all of his attempts and open the laptop.

Both men stopped moving instantly as he waited for Joe to put two and two together.

“W-what is this?” Joe turned around and looked his husband.

He didn’t respond.

Joe slammed the computer shut, threw it on the bed, and began to pace back and forth before stopping right in front of him again.

“David, what the fuck is that? Because you went to see Roe today and you’ve been weird all night and I need you to tell me what the fucking is going on before I start throwing shit.”

Joe’s eyes were full of unshed tears, anger, and fear and he’s started shaking so David pulled him against his chest and held him tight.

He whispered, tears of his own falling freely, “I have cancer.”

Joe’s heart, breath, and world stopped. No, just fucking no. Shit like this doesn’t really happen, can’t happen. Not to them. Not after all they’d already been through.

Joe collapsed to the floor, crying, and David followed.

“Joe, it’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Joe pulled away quickly and glared at his husband, “What?! Fine? Nothing’s going to be fine!”

“Yes it is.”

“Is it treatable?”

“In a way, yeah, but-”

“But what?” Joe asked though he already knew the answer.

“I-I don’t think I want to go through with it. It only has a twenty-three percent success rate.”

“You don’t think it’s worth it? You don’t think our lives are worth it? You don’t fucking think I’m worth it?”

Now David was angry. He pushed off the floor and crowded Joe against their dresser, knick-knacks clanging together against the sudden movement.

“Don’t ever think you’re not worth every last _fucking_ breath I have, Joseph Liebgott.”

“Then why?” Joe’s voice had lost all their fight and now took a pleading tone.

“The treatment,” he took a deep, steadying breath before continuing, “It’s highly aggressive. So much so, it could kill me before it _possibly_ saves me. It’s expensive and after everything with my parents I don’t think they’d help and I wouldn’t want them to. I just…I’m scared Joe and I need you. I need you more than ever and I need your support in this.”

Joe pushed away and walked a few feet away.

“Support? You want me to support your decision to die? Without trying?”

“I-that’s not it Joe. I’m doing this for you.”

“Me?! That’s fucking bullshit and you know it! You’re doing this for yourself. You’re doing this so you don’t have to deal with losing the one person you love the most. You’re doing this because you think you’re being selfless by leaving me without what? Bills? Debt? You think any of that shit would matter to me if you were fucking gone? You really think any amount of money is worth more to me than you? More than your life? It’s selfish David, it’s the most selfish thing you could ever do.”

Joe sat down heavily on the bed and put his head in his hands.

Several moments later, he felt his hands being gently pulled away as his husband, face wet with tears, spoke, “I’m sorry, Joe.”

Joe shook his head and moved to look away, but David grabbed his chin and forced him to look at him.

“Help me.”

Joe stared at David, shocked and moved by his choice in words.

“Really?”

“Yeah, you always did manage to call me out on my shit.”

Joe laughed and pulled David into him and crashed their lips together in a desperate plea of last times and forevers.

* * *

 

Joe’s phone kept ringing with texts of, “He’s not here,” and “We’ll find him,” but he ignored them in favor of reminiscing.

He moved to the kitchen and thought on the most terrifying moment in his life, today notwithstanding.

* * *

 

“Hey babe, I can’t figure out this stupid laptop that you _insisted_ I get because, and I quote, ‘Joe it’s the twenty-first century, just fucking join us al-‘”

Joe threw the new laptop to the ground when he saw his husband passed out on their kitchen floor.

“Web? David! No, no, no!” Joe pleaded and slapped the slightly yellow, sweaty face gently, trying to get him to come to.

He pulled his phone out and dialed 911, frantically yelling that they send the best fucking people to his house immediately.

Then he called Doc Roe, needing his calm, collected presence in any capacity at the moment.

“Liebgott, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Web passed out in the kitchen Doc. H-he’s a little yellow and sweaty and his breathing is shallow. I-I called 911, but can you help?”

“Alright Joe, I need ya to get a cold rag and keep dabbin' it across his face until the paramedics get there. I’m headin' to the hospital and I’ll meet ya there.”

“O-okay Doc.”

“Joe?”

“Yeah Doc?”

“He’s gonna be okay.”

“Thanks.”

After he was treated and moved to a comfortable room for a few days of observation, Joe finally collapsed.

When Web came to, the first thing he saw was Ron Speirs silently scaring a nurse away from where she was talking too closely with Lip.

He laughed and immediately regretted it when pain shot through his abdomen and ricocheted through his body.

“He’s awake, go get Joe.” Speirs told Lip softly, shooting one last look at the nurse who scurried off to get Roe.

“You gave us quite a scare there buddy.” Speirs deadpanned and Web glared at him knowing he could really laugh.

“Ron, you don’t have to be an asshole to a dying man.”

Speirs eyes narrowed, “You are not dying, David and you will not let something as small as cancer kill you. I don’t appreciate even joking about that.”

Web nodded and for the first time felt like he _would_ beat this. He felt immense guilt that he hadn’t felt that yet. He felt he _had_ to fight it for Joe, but he didn’t think he would.

Joe burst through the door, out of breath, and more ragged and exhausted than David ever remembered seeing him.

“You fucking asshole!” Joe shouted. Not the first words he would’ve liked to hear, but they weren’t unwelcomed.

“Hello to you too sweetheart, glad you could make it.”

Joe invaded his space and kissed him hard. It hurt a little but he gladly welcomed and devoured it.

They eventually pulled apart and Joe placed his forehead against his husband's, “Don’t ever fucking scare me like that again.”

David smiled, “I won’t.”

* * *

 

David Webster was a fucking liar! Joe kicked and punched the kitchen cabinets until his knuckles bruised and he collapsed from exhaustion.

“Where the hell are you David?” Joe asked the empty house.

_I need a change of scenery._

“That fucking asshole!”

Joe shot up, grabbed his keys, wallet, and phone before shooting out of the house and onto his bike.

He sped through familiar alleyways and side streets until he reached the marina.

He looked for David’s boat, but didn’t see it in its usual spot. He ran forward and hopped the fence before he sprinted to the edge of the dock where he could see every stationed boat. He looked right, left, and then right once more when he notice the black pirate flag Joe demanded he get when they bought the boat for their fifth wedding anniversary.

He ran faster than he'd ever had, shouting David’s name all the way, drawing the attention of several other owners out for day.

He saw a head of dark brown hair turn around quickly and he saw David’s look of complete shock and awe before he stopped the boat from projecting forward anymore.

“Get your fucking ass back here!” He shouted amidst the current gang of spectators.

Twenty minutes later, after awkwardly, but successfully, docking the boat in silence, David approached his husband.

“Look I-”

Joe put up a hand, “No, don’t speak. Don’t say a word.”

“But I-“

“No! You’re gonna listen. For once in your life you’re gonna close your goddamn mouth David Webster and you’re going to listen to me.”

David nodded and waited.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Why do you still thinking leaving me is the answer? It’s not. It _never_ will be. I know you, better than you _think_ you know yourself. You think that by leaving now, leaving of your own free will, that it’ll somehow be better than being forced to leave, being _taken_ from me. You think it’s easier for me to hate you for _choosing_ to leave. That’s where you’re wrong. I could never hate you. It’s why I married you, you fucking ass. It’s gonna take a lot more than that to take me away from you. What makes you honestly believe that _this_ is the best option?”

“I tho—,”

“I’m not done. If I were to lose you today, two days from now, or twenty years from now, what else is there for me? Dying. Alone. Of old age? Without you? Without ever seeing you again? That’s not living for me shithead, that’s the slowest and most painful death.”

“Joe, you don’t understand.”

Joe laughed, fighting off tears, and closed the space between him and his husband.

“Could you do it?”

“What?”

“If it was me, could you do it? Could you watch me leaving you, _intentionally_ , never seeing me again? Could you do it?”

David took a step back and took in a few deep breaths.

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Then how could you ever expect me to just let you go?”

“Joe, I can’t keep doing the treatments. I feel like I’m already dead. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. _Please,_ don’t make do that.”

Tears were falling down David’s cheeks but he just blinked through them and looked at his husband.

Joe didn’t know what to do or say. He didn’t want to lose David in any way, but he didn’t want lose him willingly, he didn’t want to let him go. If they were going to do this, they were doing it together, no exceptions.

“Okay.”

David’s mouth snapped shut.

“O-okay?”

“Yeah, if that’s what you want, then I’ll do it.”

Joe grabbed David’s hand and pulled them around his waist before his own locked around his husband’s neck.

“Together or not at all.”

David smiled before crashing his lips against Joe’s.

They pulled apart when Joe’s phone shrilled with a loud ringtone.

“Hey Tab….Yeah I got him…The marina….I know because it wasn’t on the map…alright meet you all back at the house.”

“We gotta go, the guys are gonna be at the house before we get back.”

“All of them?” David asked incredously.

“Yup and since you took the car, we get to ride my bike.”

David groaned, but Joe just slapped his ass and told him to enjoy the ride.

* * *

 

They got back to the house just in time to see the last of the guys to walk back in.

Babe was walking with Roe up the driveway when they pulled in.

“Web!” Babe ran forward and hugged him.

“Hey Babe, how’re you?”

Babe smiled, warm and contagious as David felt his own try to match it, “Good, real good. Bill and I finally got everything together to open our own shop.”

“That’s great! Congratulations!” David hugged Babe again and saw Roe with a uncharacteristic and bright smile on his own face.

“What’s going on with your face Doc?” Joe, ever the subtle speaker, asked.

“I need to speak with David alone for a moment.”

“Gene, we’re all family, just tell them.” Babe urged.

“Tell us what?” David asked nervously, unconsciously reaching for Joe’s hand that had already reached his.

“While I’m sure today’s fiasco coulda been avoided had ya answered my four phone calls this mornin', but I can now say that, David Webster, you are officially in remission.”

Babe was practically jumping up and down, he was so giddy, “Can I go tell the guys?”

“Babe, I think they’d probably wanna do that themselves.”

David spoke up, barely above a whisper, “No, i-it’s fine, please tell them.”

Babe grabbed Roe’s hand and pulled him up the driveway and into the house.

Joe and David turned to each other at the same time and burst into laughter.

Several minutes later, they’d finally calmed down and had the eyes of their large group of grown up friends on them, too many faces pushed up against their doors and windows.

David pulled Joe against him, happy and hopeful for the first time in three months, and he kissed his husband desperately and full of life.

When they finally pulled away air, David gripped Joe’s hand tightly and motioned towards their front door.

“Together?”

Joe smiled, “Or not at all.”

They started to walk towards their door until they heard something crash to the floor.

“Skip!” They shouted simultaneously as they ran toward the house.

**Author's Note:**

> So...? I still can't write sad endings?! I'm terrible, I know.  
> on the [tumbles](http://thecompanyofheroes.co.vu), come talk to me about stuff n' thangs.


End file.
